#audi a2

To be clear, when news originally broke out... I barely remember it at all, actually, but I'm pretty sure it felt like the world was ending. Then again, I was 17, so most things did. Now though, I think my brain filed it under "Fine, I guess". But why?

Doug DeMuro recently made a video about his "hot take" cars, and one of them was the Mini Countryman, another SUVy version of a car I love - his argument being that it doesn't really matter if a car doesn't live up to what it owes its name to if it's a good, interesting, fun car overall.

And I found myself agreeing.

About the Countryman.

I mean, he's right! If you judge it on its own merits, it's a charming, characterful, fun little car! Maybe I just give the Mach-E a pass because I like that sportified electric SUV so dang much okay next theory.

But maybe it's the first part that we should focus on - that Doug DeMuro said he likes the thing! Could it have been his enthusiastic Mach-E review, or Regular Car Reviews' understanding take on the move, that swayed me to like it m- to dislike it less?

Well, the former proudly bought a first generation A Class and I still resent that it outsold the Audi A2 it competed with despite looking like a grandmother reading a meme, so that can't be all there is to it.

But maybe, it's not what it is, but what else there is? After all, the Mini Countryman shines most atop the slab o' drab that is its segment. That's also a strong argument for the 500L, after all...

...and really, for the larger Living version especially.

Does that lengthening of the rear section make the grace evaporate from its proportions so hard even the front look worse? Perhaps. Does it look like a 500L was running away from someone and they grabbed it from the back saying "You're not going anywhere"? Vaguely. But the last time Fiat had tried its hand at seating more than five I had to put a trigger warning on the result.

So maybe it's just that the electric SUV market is so dire, so awful, so wretched, that-

Alright, next theory.

You know, maybe, instead of looking at what works for me, we should look at what didn't. Especially considering that I like the above examples more than the Mach-E anyway. (Well, at least on principle. I can't stomach the back of a 500L Living in practice.) And I think it's because the basic idea of those versions is to take the core stylistic traits of the standard car and applying them to a different body style, and that just doesn't work with a Mustang. Its core traits are so inescapably tied to its body style that transposing them to any other would either stretch them beyond recognition or make them look like a weird mask draped over the car. See that F-150 with a Mustang front.

Wait, this actually works better than the Mach-E.

Alright, it seems I need to bust out something truly wretched for the Mach-E to score some points here.

I'm sorry to do this to you.

This is the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.

Fuck this piece of shit.

THERE IT IS! There's the anger. But surely, then, I should feel even more of it about the 2010s Dodge Dart I was writing about when I first mentioned this dreadful vehicle on the blog, right?

After all, look at this shit. They are so completely, utterly far apart...

...that I don't even register them as related. They just feel like two cars with the same name. I didn't cry that the Dodge Dart was no longer a muscle car in the same way I don't cry that the Suzuki Splash didn't get a stepside bed.

Okay, in my defense that was a joke.

Like the Eclipse Cross.

Okay, that isn't fair. My joke was lighthearted and fun. Culminating the lineage of one of the 90s' most beloved tuner cars with a crossover sharing a footprint if that is when dark humor crosses my line.

I think that reflects a bit of a bell curve when it comes to revivals. The original Dart was so old I didn't have any meaningful connection to it - and though that was partly me being very young and in the wrong continent, if you fished far enough back it'd go for a lot more people. Reviving a 30s car? Piece of cake. Seven people would even notice. Similarly, "reviving" a 5 year old car? Just update it! In the middle is where things get more complicated than an X Games skate trick.

"Watch! I'll do a frontside 360!"

*ragdolls lifelessly down the ramp sliding to a stop at the bottom while the skateboard rolls up the other end and comes back down to bang on the helmet*

"Tada!"

Yes, I am putting myself through thinking about this blood-boiling insult again (the things I do for y'all), because it's useful to illustrate how and why this would've been a frontside 360 and a half. A frontside 540.

Because there, you have what the Supra had to deal with - an ancestor miles removed from anything current cars can afford to be, whose spirit muddied over time with the traits of cars of its era. But with the Capri it's even trickier, because it never evolved either. It may seem like it would make things simpler - fewer identities to bring together, ask the 400Z what hassle that is...

...but really, an evolution boils down a model's identity to what few traits persist through the iterations, and creates leeway for experimentation in other areas. It creates the idea of a core spirit that changes and adapts to the times. And, pretty much inevitably, it introduces highs and lows.

See: the Eclipse, and its Elvis-like arc. It immediately made a splash...

picked up steam and the youth's attention...

...and with time gained bulk and lost performance, befitting an aging demographic, its looks becoming more fussy and confused...

...culminating in a graceless end and a scrappy final photograph.

No, I didn't take these. They're the official press pictures of the last Eclipse ever, exactly as delivered to the press.

Yikes.

By contrast, the Capri's more like Kurt Cobain - it didn't live long enough for its essence to get warped by the times. If you look at its "three generations"...

Well, to quote an earlier line in this post, "Alright, it seems I need to bust". But my actual point was that they're essentially the same. It maintained its taut, youthful coolness, and left us before time could wear its schtick out and force it to either find a way to evolve or become embarrassingly outdated.

This is why the new... no, I don't even want to humor Ford about this. This is why that thing invokes such intense hatred - because the Capri was a specific idea etched into our minds with crisp detail and looked back on with rose tinted glasses. We are almost unrealistically kind to it - we look at its now weak performance within the context of its day, but appreciate its then normal analog simplicity in the context of today, and so on. And we want a new one to represent what we felt about the car, how we remember it, rather than its actual role and characteristics.

The Mustang, tho? Eminem.

Made a splash...

...made some trash...

(Yep! The Mustang hatchback is real!)

...got back on its feet (luckily, little else was meaningfully less of a heap in those miserable years, so the Mustang II still sold well enough to get a new model)...

(There it is again!)

...and through highs and lows is still going to this day, with very annoying people sticking their heads in unrelated conversations to tout it as Still The GOAT.

(And indeed, this is the second verse of Calm Down on wheels.)

And that's the real point.

The Mach-E is not like that time in the '90s when only public outcry stopped Ford from making the next Mustang a front wheel drive sport coupe based on the Mazda 626.

Well, actually it is like that, because they still ended up making and selling it, just alongside a new Mustang - as the Probe.

And it was decent and it sold well and everyone was fine with it.

Because no, a front wheel drive captive import sports coupé in no way fit the Mustang ethos, but no car needs to be a Mustang if there's still a Mustang to bear the Mustang torch. And such is the case for the Mini Countryman, such is the case for the 500L, and such is the case for the Mustang Mach-E.

The Mach-E didn't take the Mustang away from me. It didn't rip its name out of a rest it deserved to stay in. It didn't shoehorn itself into a legacy it didn't belong in nor live up to like The Heart Part 6 (and that's my yearly musical reference quota met).

It's not claiming to be the new Mustang. It's just another Mustang. And, as you've read me say before, providing an option, however unfitting, will never offend me near as much as making it what we're stuck with.

And no, there was no wagon version. But there are a handful of cases of first gen examples being converted into shooting brakes, each with its own fascinating story. And of course, a plethora of renders of shooting brake Mustangs of every ilk - and some of them, in my humble opinion, fuck.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question: if you liked this post, you might like those - or the blog’s Discord server, linked in the pinned post!